Breaking news, fellow Blizzard fanboys!

Blizzard has been pretty tight-lipped about the specifics of the upcoming Heroes Of The Storm patch so we’ve put together a report based upon what they have told us and what makes sense given the upcoming open beta and full release dates (May 19th 2015 and June 2nd 2015, respectively). These details come on the heels of the following statement from Vaeflare, Community Manager on the Heroes Of The Storm forums:

We have indeed not yet announced when our next patch or Hero release are, so anyone claiming otherwise is factually incorrect.
We have, however, confirmed an official release date for Heroes of the Storm: June 2, 2015.

This vague response has many Blizzard fans frustrated. It’s been over five weeks and we still don’t know much about the next major patch. In a recent developer spotlight with Matt Cooper, HotS game designer, we did get some straight answers. Here is what Blizzard has confirmed for the upcoming Heroes Of The Storm patch:

Healing Ward Rework – Healing ward will have scaling HP as a trade-off for being affected by all attacks, including AoE abilities. It will also have a higher targeting priority so enemies an’t sit on it to block attacks.

The Rich Get Richer – Diablo and E.T.C. are both getting reworked a smidge with new Storm Powers. That’s right: the two most popular Warriors in the current meta are being improved further. The reworks, in a nutshell, will Diablo and E.T.C. will be even stronger in Heroes Of The Storm!. E.T.C. players will get more value from Mosh Pit and worry less about “hard counters”. While I play both Warriors and love them, I hope that other Warriors are buffed to keep pace.

Balance Changes – Lots of hero changes are coming in addition to the aforementioned. Chen is going to be buffed so that he is more than just a trolling damage sponge. Anub’arak will now have more effective beetles and talent specs thereof. Abathur’s backdoor cheese plays will be essentially removed. Lost Vikings will have their Longboat nerfed and their less-used heroic buffed. Last but not least, Illidan is not being touched.

Sylvanas, The Banshee Queen – Blizzard has confirmed that Sylvanas is well within their win-rate threshold, hovering at around 50%. The only change they are looking to do in the future is a rework of her Possession heroic; however, they do not have enough feedback to work off of currently.

There are some nice and, well, interesting design decisions but we are sure there is much more in the pipelines. Now for some speculation or, better yet, educated guesses…

Seksy Geeks Leaderboard

A leaderboard of all users on the site who have earnt karma points. The table is sorted descendingly by the amount of karma points that the users have, and also shows the user’s name and karma points total.